Packers Have Prepared Well For Work Stoppage

Ted may have to take a pay cut if the lockout drags on.

While most NFL teams are making moves to cut costs because of the lockout, the Green Bay Packers look just fine.

The Packers have virtually no debt and have been building a franchise preservation fund, which was worth $127.5 million at the end of the last fiscal year, that will keep the organization operating fairly normally through the lockout.

“Our planning has always been to be sure we were fully funded to finance our team,” said Jason Wied, vice president of administration and general counsel. “That said, we did feel obligated to make some cuts.”

Those cuts will probably look minor when compared to other teams. The Packers have frozen salaries and hiring and their executives may take sizable pay cuts if the lockout drags on — president [intlink id=”122″ type=”category”]Mark Murphy[/intlink] and general manager [intlink id=”20″ type=”category”]Ted Thompson[/intlink] would be affected in that scenario.

Around the league, team employees are already having salaries cut and many face the prospect of being laid off during the lockout. The situation is largely the result of a court ruling blocking the league from using their television contract to fund operations during the lockout.

So, while the rest of the league will find it hard to continue operating normally, the Packers won’t. Wied said the team will continue to spend money to reach out to fans and football operations will carry on.

“Everything we do is to prepare to play football again on a regular schedule,” Wied said. “Football operations are continuing to operate as usual.

Yeah I was thinking about that the other day. Traveling 100 people 10 plus times a year top of the line accommodations. Even just planning that would be expensive.

I’ve also been thinking about the absurdity of the players demanding to see the personal expenses of the owners (a sole proprietorship is personal financials) because they MIGHT be wasting money. Well, I’m very few owners are “making it rain” in strip clubs or spending $2000 a month on shark food. Why don’t the players make their personal financials public first so we can all nitpick and laugh at how spoiled they are.

to me, it boils down to one simple question: are you a partner, or are you an employee? If you’re a partner, you’re entitled to look at the books. If you’re an employee, you most certainly are not. Given that they don’t have access now tells me everything I need to know. It’s therefore not the owners responsibility or obligation to show the players anything financial.

so yeah, the owners are going to play hardball. I suppose that’s their right. That doesn’t make it right for us the fans, but then again we don’t have hundreds of millions of dollars on the line to run a franchise.